On 1/28/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Handled correctly this could be a PR benefit for WP.
Not long ago I expressed my opinion that our view toward Conflicts of Interest was not a workable one. I'm also of the view that any
severe
action against editors who are paid to clean up a company's article, will only drive such activities underground.
I think that we need to establish a right of defence or rebuttal (or whatever we want to call it). This would allow anyone who is
directly
affected by the article a place to defend his point of view. This
could
probably be done in a template that is linked from the page in question. The person or company affected would have the exclusive
right
to make substantive edits to that template. The result would be a section that is the person's view on the issue; if they want to make
a
radical departure from the truth that would be their right within
that
context. If the subject tries to put the same information in the
main
body of the article that would be subject to the usual meat-grinder
rules.
I'm sure that we will have a few of our own dinosaurs complaining
that
they should have the right to edit everything, and that having such pages would be tremendously unwiki, but I think that giving any
person
the opportunity to defend himself should improve Wikipedia's image as one of fairness.
A few simple rules may be necessary for these persons. 1. The writer must be the person himself or have the right to
speak
on behalf of the person 2. The writer must be registered and properly identified. 3. All that he writes is subject to GFDL 4. The financial arrangements between the writer and the person
are
not our concern. 5. We reserve the right to limit the length of submissions to prevent long-winded rants.
Um... why? If we write the article as well as we should, they will not have any valid reason to complain, and I refuse to think that we should be hosting blatantly untrue things under the guise of the subject defending himself. Do we really want the White House telling us about how everyone who disagrees with them is a terrorist-lover, in their own page where nobody is allowed to remove the content, or even register disagreement?
-Amarkov
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